Very much NSFW: Jean-Efflam Bavouzet/Quatuor Danel at Wigmore Hall reviewed

‘Drammatico’, wrote César Franck over the opening of his Piano Quintet, and you’d better believe he meant it. The score bulges with clues: piu dolce; espressivo sempre; eventually (and steamiest of all if you’re even slightly attuned to the absinthe-dazed atmosphere of French Wagnerism) tenero ma con passione — ‘tenderly, but with passion’. It was too much for Camille Saint-Saëns, who played the piano in the world première in 1880. The gossip was that Saint-Saëns knew of Franck’s infatuation with the composer Augusta Holmès, and was repulsed by music that — to jealous ears — sounded like the one-handed diary of a 58-year-old lecher. As he reached the final page, with its dedication ‘À mon ami Camille Saint-Saëns’, he stamped from the platform and refused to return. A stagehand swept the score into a wastepaper bin. When Franck published the Quintet a few months later, the dedication stood but the words ‘mon ami’ had been deleted.